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American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
National Board of Directors
Plenary Meeting
October 20, 2007

Introductory Statement by the makers of the motion:

AFTRA and SAG are about to begin negotiating primetime television terms under AFTRA’s Network Code and SAG’s TV/Theatrical contract. Our unions share membership and share jurisdiction. They have a successful and important tradition of bargaining our separate contracts together under the terms of Phase One, to prevent disparities that could disadvantage members.

SAG’s recent board action to institute “bloc voting” is a distinct violation of the terms, spirit, pattern, and practice of Phase One and our traditional joint negotiations. Such bloc voting violates Phase One’s requirement of one member, one vote.

AFTRA and SAG will negotiate multiple contracts in the near future. The bloc voting scheme will negatively affect those negotiations.

The National Board of AFTRA, representing the 70,000 members of the union, believes the Phase One joint negotiation of our contracts remains in the best tradition and in the best interests of the membership of both AFTRA and SAG. 

For these reasons, and with the full support of the Strategy Cabinet, we move:

The Motion made, seconded, and carried:

▪ That the AFTRA National Board strongly urges the National Board of the Screen Actors Guild to comply with the letter and spirit of the Phase One agreement between AFTRA and SAG, including rescinding its decision on bloc or unit voting, which is clearly a violation and material breach of said agreement.

▪ Further, the AFTRA National Board strongly urges the SAG National Board to instruct its special committee to continue the talks with AFTRA’s committee. Those talks were most recently held on June 28 in Los Angeles.

▪ And further, the AFTRA National Board strongly urges SAG—after rescinding its bloc voting rule and affording all members of the negotiating committee the right to cast their vote—to work with AFTRA, its principal bargaining partner, in developing proposals and strategies for the upcoming joint negotiations as called for in Phase One.